Marc S. Seriff (born May 5, 1948 in

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

) is best known as the CTO and co-founder of

America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

, along with

Jim Kimsey James Verlin Kimsey (September 15, 1939 – March 1, 2016) was the co-founder of AOL. He was the first chairman of the company and served as CEO until 1995. Although Kimsey is best known for having helped to create AOL, he also spearheaded many o ...

(CEO),

Steve Case Stephen McConnell Case (born August 21, 1958) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist best known as the former chief executive officer and chairman of America Online (AOL). Case joined AOL's predecessor company, Quantum Computer ...

, and

William von Meister William F. von Meister (February 21, 1942 – May 18, 1995) was an American entrepreneur who founded and participated in a number of startup ventures in the Washington, D.C., area. These included The Source, an early online service and CompuServe ...

(as Control Video Corporation).

Biography

Seriff received his B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

in 1971 and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

(MIT) in 1974.Marc S. Seriff bio from SEC filing for U.S. Online Communications
. 1998-07-24. In 1974 he was one of the first dozen people at Telenet Communications. He later served as an executive of several audio and data communications companies, including GTE Corporation, Venture Technology, Digital Music, Inc., and

Control Video Corporation AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

. In 1985, he co-founded

Quantum Computer Services AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

(later known as America Online), where he served as a Senior Vice President until 1996. From August 1997 to May 1998 he was a director of InteliHome, which merged with Global Converging Technologies. From January to June 1998 he was

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of Eos Management, LLC. He also served as a director of U.S. Online Communications. In a 2007 interview, Seriff cited two people who influenced him at a young age:

J.C.R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologistMiller, G. A. (1991), "J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of A ...

, one of his professors in graduate school at MIT, and Larry Roberts, whom he met and worked for at Telenet.

References

1948 births Living people AOL people People from Austin, Texas University of Texas at Austin alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni American chief executives American chief technology officers {{US-compu-bio-stub 20th-century American businesspeople MIT School of Engineering alumni